


Eternity Without

by skogr



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Semi-Public Sex, commonwealth citizens behaving badly, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:32:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skogr/pseuds/skogr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hancock isn't surprised that there's someone in Goodneighbor who'll sell her a supposed 'experimental radiation drug', but he is surprised that she's willing to entertain the notion that it isn't total bull. This can only end badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eternity Without

In retrospect, it’s probably his own fucking fault. He’s told the story that many damn times, it’s practically an art form. It sounds good the way he tells it, like something people should envy him for rather than being a hair’s breadth away from being the most monumental fuck up of his entire life. He told her it the first time they met. He made it sound good. Risky, but good. Parker bought it, hook line and sinker, and that’s before he even got started on all that crap he keeps joking with her now about making it permanent. Doing this long term.

Fuck. It’s _definitely_ his fault.

Parker’s a high risk, high reward kind of girl. It’s one of the reasons Hancock likes her so much. Most of the time, he’s right behind her, shotgun in hand. The Commonwealth is dangerous, and he's never been one to shy from danger. But this -

It starts like this: they’re lying blissed out on a filthy mattress in Goodneighbor and he can’t quite piece together all the parts of the previous evening, which is generally a good sign. He remembers flashes of chems and smooth skin on not-so-smooth skin, wakes up with Parker’s limbs tangled with his. Also, a good sign.

She wakes up with the biggest, goofiest grin on her face, like she’s just remembered she’s owed the biggest stash of caps and she’s about to cash in.

“I’ve got something to show you,” she says, and apparently this is _important_ , because she pulls away from his lazy kisses with that same, shit-eating grin on her face. And hey, that’s fine, because when Parker moves with this kind of purpose, it usually means she’s got something planned, and he tends to like her plans.

Which is how they end up here: in an abandoned warehouse with Parker waving a syringe in his face, and he’s never been less enthusiastic to see a chem in his life.

“So, I was talking to this guy last night,” she starts coyly, “and he knew this guy -”

He realizes where this is going with alarming speed and clarity.

“ - who knew this _other_ guy who could get me some experimental radiation drugs, would you believe it?”

“In Goodneighbor? I’d believe anything.” He folds his arms. “Trouble is, that’s sorta what they’re counting on.”

“He seemed like the real deal, Hancock. He knew what he was talking about.”

He sighs. Parker can still be so goddamn _naive_ sometimes, you’d never peg her for a vault dweller most of the time, she’s lost the suit and the wide eyed surprise but never quite built up the necessary layers of cynicism. “Uhuh. How much?”

She grins. “Hundred caps. Pretty decent price for immortality, huh?”

“Parks,” he says slowly, “you got robbed.”

“Jeez, Hancock,” she says, looking almost hurt. “Who pissed in your sugar bombs?”

“Parker -”

“I thought you’d be happy!”

“Hey, no - no, you know it’s not that, c’mon.” He reaches up with one hand to cup her face, and she presses her cheek into it with a sigh. “Look, I know Goodneighbor. You can get most anything here, if you know the right people. But you gotta _know_ ‘em, Parker, you can’t find a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy -”

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, twirling the syringe in her fingers. “But isn’t it worth a shot? I mean, worst case scenario, I seriously overpaid for a regular high. Not so bad, is it?”

“Not even close. Worst case scenario you overpaid for a tube of toxic shit that _really_ fucks you up.”

“Or it could be an actual experimental radiation drug.” She quirks her eyebrow playfully.

“Yeah, I had that covered under ‘toxic shit’. I know it worked out okay for me, but I’m pretty sure that was one in a million, Parks.” He presses his forehead to hers. “Don’t get me wrong, eternity with you sounds fucking _awesome_. But eternity without even one lifetime isn’t something I want to think about, okay?”

She bites her lip; he thinks he might have won. “I guess.”

“C’mon,” he says gently, kissing her quickly. “Let’s get out of here.”

He’s halfway across the room before he realizes she hasn’t moved.

She has that stubborn edge to her voice he’s usually so fond of. “But what if it works?”

“Parker -”

“Only one way to find out,” she says, and for a moment - he just doesn’t _get it_ , he doesn’t know why she’s rehashing this again when they’ve just agreed it’s fucking idiotic, and then, with this weird little half-smile, she looks right at him and says, “I love you.”

Hancock has had a few pretty fucking terrible moments in his life, and yet, somehow - this tops them all. He can feel the bottom of his world dropping away in those few, infinitesimal moments as she looks at him with that stubborn set to her jaw that he loves so much and suddenly hates so much, in almost equal measure. He loves it more, of course. How couldn’t he?

“Parker, don’t you _fucking_ dare -”

She jabs the needle into her arm, and his heart stops beating.

 

-

 

It isn’t Hancock’s first rodeo, he knows what to do. The moment Parker drops to the floor, _clearly_ not having the best high of her life, and _clearly_ having made her own monumental fuck up, the icy horror in his veins get shelved as he snaps into action. God knows how he does it, but he does it. He carries her limp body back through the back alleys and warehouses, and the good thing about Goodneighbor is that no one bats an eyelid, and the _bad_ thing about Goodneighbor is that no one bats an eyelid so he has to bust out the Mayor voice.

It’s kind of a blur after that, but the thing about Goodneighbor is you can get most anything, if you know the right guy. He knows the right guys.

Somehow, Amari gets involved, and after a small, wretched eternity, there’s Parker, barely conscious and puking her guts up outside the Old State House. It’s a shit show, an absolute shit show. Everyone knows Hancock, and most of them know Parker too, if not in her own right then by association with him. Everyone wants to get a look. _Show’s over_ , Fahrenheit yells at the crowd that’s gathered, _mind your own fucking business_. And because it’s Goodneighbor, they do.

Fahrenheit doesn’t say anything, just helps him haul her up the stairs with a grimace. She’s always thought Parker was a liability, but she knows when to say something, and when to keep her mouth shut. Now isn’t the time for _told you so_.

“What was it?” she asks eventually, after they’ve positioned Parker on the couch and jammed another stimpak into her thigh for good measure. Hancock just shakes his head. What can he say? Some kind of misguided declaration of love? He glances down at Parker, pallid and limp, and he is suddenly _furious_. At her, for being so damn reckless. At himself, for putting the idea in her head. At the contrary nature of their existences for being the way they are.

“Get out of here,” he says, not unkindly, and Fahrenheit sighs, but does as he asks, though not before emptying her pockets of stimpaks wordlessly onto the table. He nods in thanks.

He leans back in his chair and tries not to think about the eternity without.

 

-

 

She wakes him up with a hoarse mumble.

“Did it work?”

He kneels by the couch, watches her try to open her eyes. “Nope.”

“Damn,” she croaks, and winces as she tries to shift position. “Not even a decent high, either.”

Hancock pushes her back down onto the couch. “Hey, don’t try to get up.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

She groans, blinks up at him groggily. “You’re pissed.”

He thinks about denying it, about letting the relief of seeing her awake wash over him, but he doesn’t. “I’m pissed.”

She reaches out with a shaky hand to cradle his face. “That’s probably fair enough.”

“Tell me something, Parker,” he says roughly, holding his hand over hers, “you got a death wish?”

“Of course not.”

“Sure as hell looked like it back there.”

“I’ve got an _alive_ wish, dummy. I want to be alive for as long as possible. That’s what this is all about.” She smiles at him through her cracked lips. “I just want to be with you.”

“ _Parker_.”

“I get it.” She rubs her thumb over the pocked skin of his face. “Not the way to go about it, I guess.” And then, much more softly, “I’m sorry, Hancock.”

“Don’t do that again,” he says, and it comes out sounding more like an order than he intends. “Look - I know this is pretty rich coming from me, but there are some risks even I can’t approve of, okay?”

“Right, because you’d _never_ put some weird looking chem in your body.”

“Course I would, you know that. But this body is already screwy as all hell - _because_ I put some weird looking chem in it - and it can take it. You can’t.” He kisses her forehead tenderly. “We gotta take better care of this one.”

She sighs in frustration. “Which is why it needs an upgrade.”

“Yeah, not sure I’d call it that.” He brushes her hair back from where it’s curled damply across her forehead. “I like you the way you are.”

“You don’t want me to live as long as you?” She sounds hurt, the same kind of hurt as in the warehouse. She doesn’t get it.

“I don’t think that’s an option, love,” he says quietly, “I don’t think we’re gonna find a miracle chem, no matter how hard we look. We could waste our lives away hoping, and I’d rather just waste it away with you, you know?”

“But I’ll _die_ , John.”

“I know, Parker. I’m kind of okay with that.” He kisses the inside of her wrist. “Still got a lot of time ahead of us. You get to live it all, if you take care of yourself. Get to keep all your toes, too.”

She laughs weakly for a moment or two, before stopping with a wince. “God, that hurts. Is now a bad time to ask for Med-X?”

“Sorry, Parks. No meds for you until you’re clean of this shit.”

She groans. “In that case, I’m gonna throw up. You got a bucket?”

“Coming right up.”

Maybe it’s weird to tell your girlfriend you love her just after she’s spewed all over your shoes, but it’s been a weird day, and he loves her. They’ve never been big on standing on ceremony, anyway.

 

-

 

Parker’s back to her usual self within a couple of days, but they stay in Goodneighbor and shoot the shit with Fahrenheit, who’s apparently decided that Parker maybe isn’t so awful after all. She crawls into his lap after half a glass of murky-looking vodka and kisses him with a thoroughness that is entirely at odds with the relaxed mood they’ve been setting. Fahrenheit looks utterly unimpressed, and then Parker shifts against him with a soft little sound, and Fahrenheit splutters, ‘hell, _no_ ,’ before grabbing her bottle with a disgusted noise and leaving them to it.

Hancock tries to look contrite, but it’s hard with an armful of pliant vault dweller. Honestly, this really isn’t his style. Time and a place for everything, and a friendly gathering is not the time, and the Old State House is not the _place_. There’s only half a door to this room, for Christ’s sake, and it's not even closed. It’s practically a public area. He’s their _Mayor._ He tries to maintain a sense of decorum, even as he projects a careful image of a debauched lifestyle. There’s some shit they really don’t need to see, and his wrinkly ass is numbers one through fifteen.

In light of recent events, he finds he suddenly doesn’t give a flying fuck.

Parker raises a finger to his forehead and flicks his hat off with a grin, still straddling him, and then there’s that frenzied pawing at each other’s clothing he always enjoys, the way she fumbles more and more the more impatient she gets, that look she gives him when she knows he’s deliberately slowing things down.

She’s so _soft_ , she’s so utterly perfect and he loves every last inch more than he knows how to tell her. He’d love her if she was a ghoul, sure, but this is Parker as God intended, and God clearly knew what the hell He was doing with her even if He fucked everything else up along the way. He sighs as she runs her fingers across his chest, dipping slightly in and out of every pockmark and scar. Thing with being a ghoul and getting intimate with someone is you gotta make sure they’re not _too_ into you or _too_ grossed out. Grossed out is bad for everyone involved, it’s uncomfortable and awkward, and _too_ into you gets kinda weird. You want someone to want you because they want you, not because of some misinformed fetish you can never quite fulfil. Just what he’s found, anyway.

Parker isn’t either. Parker just _likes_ him in all his misshapen glory. He’s too fucking lucky, that’s what he is.

Once her pants are off and his are carefully rearranged, she’s climbing back into his lap and bracing her hands on his shoulders, and if she’s being a bit hasty, he chalks it down to near death experience and also kinda being more or less in public. It’s not as if they usually get complete privacy, but Parker’s pre-War sensibilities generally entail at least four walls, a closed door and a little less proximity to other people.

He shifts forward on the couch and holds her by the waist, giving her room to manoeuvre.

“Hey, Parks,” he murmurs, “we could go somewhere -”

“Nope,” she breathes, and then she’s moving on him with the nails of one hand dug hard into the back of his neck. He can tell she’s pretty wound up, and Parker’s honestly a dream when she’s like this, it’s so easy to push her over the edge and she looks so good doing it. After watching her collapse on that warehouse floor, he wants to give her everything. He doesn’t want to waste another precious minute with her.

They’re pretty quiet in the end, betrayed mostly by the weary creaking of the couch and the floorboards beneath, their urgency bleeding into something more tender as they fuck with quiet deliberation, every movement measured and hushed. Maybe she’s more of an exhibitionist than he thought - hell, maybe _he_ is - because they get each other there with astonishingly little effort. Sex is weird like that. Sometimes it all just comes together - almost literally, Parker chasing the friction she needs matching up almost exactly to the friction he needs. Sometimes it’s nice to have to take your time. Sometimes it’s nice not to.

She arches her back into the most spectacular curve, and he runs his hand down her perfectly smooth spine as he bites back the groan he wants to make, burying his mouth into the crook of her neck. Then, she laughs breathlessly as they seem to remember _where the fuck they are_ , and she’s grabbing her pants off the floor and Hancock is blinking up at her in a daze. Better than chems, that's Parker, and he doesn't say that sort of thing lightly.

“Okay,” she says, settling back down beside him and buttoning her shirt.

“Okay what?”

“Okay to a lifetime like this.” Her smile is so very bright, and she leans in to kiss him on the cheek. “Ghoul and human, taking on the Commonwealth one step at a time. I’m sold.”

He’s too fucking lucky, that’s what he is.


End file.
